Tearing down the "Maternal Wall"

Workforce, Oct, 2002 by Janet Wiscombe

After maternity leave, a young attorney returns to work and learns she has lost her professional status. She has been named a paralegal, and she is stunned. "I had a baby" the new mom declares. "Not a lobotomy."

The tale isn't all that improbable, says Joan Williams, law professor at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. As director of the Program on Gender, Work & Family, she recently released a study documenting how parents are the victims of workplace bias and as a result are increasingly suing their employers for job discrimination due to their status as parents. One plaintiff sued when her employer said he didn't believe that mothers should work because, "I don't see how you can do either job well." Another sued after being fired because "she was no longer dependable since she had a child."

"We are coming close to wiping mothers out of the work pool," Williams says. "There are virtually no mothers in high positions--and that sure as heck is bias. Ninety percent of women work less than 50 hours a week, yet we define the ideal worker as working 7/24. We have extremely high attrition rates--and it doesn't make sense."

In the United States--home of the longest workdays of any country in the industrialized world--there's a stigma attached to family-friendly policies such as part-time and flextime schedules, Williams says. That's why there's so much flexible scheduling on the corporate books, yet so few employees actually make use of it. There's a mistaken assumption that if an employee wants or needs flextime, it's a sign of lack of job commitment. In fact, she says, there's no correlation between the number of hours worked and the person's level of job commitment.

"There is one very important message for HR here," says Williams, a mother of two teenagers. "HR is used to thinking about diversity and gender discrimination in terms of the glass ceiling and sexual harassment. Our report [www.wcl.american.edu/gender/workfamily] shows that we should be thinking about what I call 'The Maternal Wall.' It shows that HR and diversity trainers haven't done their job."

Historically, HR has been concerned that parent-friendly policies would create a backlash among childless employees. Backlash does occur, she says, but not for the obvious reasons. "You show me a backlash against family-friendly policies and I'll bet there are flaws in the implementation of the policies. If they are properly implemented, you change the assumption that the best workers don't have ongoing family responsibilities. You make programs available for workers with--and without--children. Effective plans aren't limited only to parents.

"You don't ask an employee, 'Why do you want flextime?' If a worker presents a viable model, why should the employer care why the worker needs it?"

Fathers as well as mothers need flextime options, professionals as much as low-wage workers, says Williams, adding that low-wage workers especially need, want, and take time off. "It's called quitting."

Gender bias and discrimination are more than just potential legal nightmares. They also don't fit with most employers' self-image, and are lousy for the bottom line, she says. "Most companies would be shocked that their policies run counter to the value of family commitment."